LONDON 17-Jul-2010 170
The experience of consuming cricket since 1992 played a key role in us deciding to witness the 4th day of 1st Test match between Pakistan and Australia at Lord’s in the later’s ‘home’ series as we anticipated to be the day of result in the match. The Test series was fitted to be one of the ultimate fights between Pakistan’s bowling and Australia’s batting.
Pakistan’s bowling looked the best in many years with the presence of Mohammed Amer, Mohammed Asif, Umar Gul and Danish Kaneria however
their batting has been in shambles with the exit of Mohammed Yousuf and Younis Khan. The first three days of the Test at Lord’s lived upto the billing and finally it boiled down to Pakistan needing 439 runs to take an unbeatable 1-0 lead in the 2 match series. At stumps on day 3, Salman Butt and rookie Azhar Ali had managed to build a strong platform and the team entered day 4 with 325 runs required to win and 9 wickets in hand.
With potentially 180 overs left and not much depth in Pakistan’s batting, majority of the responsibility was on the shoulders of Butt who was expected to play the anchor role. As the 4th day got underway it looked like Pakistan had got their formula right and were playing to a plan going for the victory. For the first hour, Australian bowlers were taken to the cleaners as the batting duo of Umar Amin and Butt took the advantage of an attacking field.
